# Chapter 15
The first thing I checked after taking his hand was, naturally, the information he knew so far. Fortunately, Devan only had very limited information. With just that, it didn’t seem easy to grasp all the preparations happening at the temple now. This was why Zendal’s suspicions could still remain just suspicions.
“That bastard put up a barrier around the temple. Even magic couldn’t get through.”
Devan frowned as if the matter had become troublesome. For me, it was extremely good news. But I couldn’t be completely relieved. He knew that the temple had recently purchased more materials necessary for weapon production than usual. He was also suspicious that Wimu was leaving the mountain and contacting people with high frequency. In contrast, he said Kadilen was spending more time in the temple.
Although he couldn’t observe the inside of the temple directly, he was constantly monitoring its wide perimeter, so it was impossible that he hadn’t noticed any changes. After explaining all the suspicious activities to me with a somewhat uneasy look, Devan asked:
“When I met you, someone was chasing you, right? Do you happen to know who they were?”
It was extremely fortunate that he didn’t know all the soldiers’ faces. If he knew what kind of misunderstanding Kadilen had about me, the situation would have become very awkward. I made up something vague.
“I think they were thieves roaming the village. They recognized I was royalty and chased after me.”
“They seemed quite well-trained in running…”
“D-did they?”
While he tilted his head, reminiscing, I eagerly looked for an excuse to change the topic.
“So you lied to me, Devan.”
“What lie?”
“You said you just saw me while passing by.”
He grinned.
“Strictly speaking, I was passing by. While simultaneously casting detection magic.”
“I didn’t believe you anyway.”
“But I was glad to see you again.”
I was dumbfounded by his sudden confession. He smiled nonchalantly, watching my reaction. Not wanting to show my surprise, I pretended to be calm and maintained an indifferent expression, but he uncannily sensed my confusion. Though I found him irritating as he enjoyed my reaction with a smiling face, I was relieved that I had effectively changed the subject. I’m one step ahead of you, you jerk.
“Now it’s your turn, Ludin. How was it at the temple?”
I couldn’t tell whether he was asking about Kadilen’s activities or my personal life. His expression looked too amused for it to be about his assigned task. To avoid getting entangled with him, I looked elsewhere and formally rattled off some lies.
“All they do is train. I tried various things to find out something, but there wasn’t much. I’ll need to look more closely.”
“What kind of things did you try?”
“Well… I went into buildings too…”
It was a thoughtlessly uttered remark, but the next moment, the memory vividly came back to life. Kadilen asking me what I had done, ignoring the shouts around us. The moment I reluctantly said I had tried to extinguish all the candles he cherished. Wimu sighing at me from a distance and soldiers pouring out abusive words and behavior. The memory of sitting down miserably surfaced, and I didn’t know how to continue.
He noticed my hesitation and observed me with curious eyes. I tried to explain casually, but my voice trembled a little towards the end. Devan, who had been listening to my story quietly, made an intrigued expression.
“You were planning to extinguish all those candles?”
“Yeah. But I got caught, everyone got angry. That’s it. I’m tired. Want to go out? How come there are no windows here at all… Aren’t you feeling stuffy?”
After hurriedly glossing over it, I wanted to cover my own mouth for the rambling words that followed. Devan, who I knew would not miss a strange sign and would dig into it, just listened to me with an ambiguous expression without asking any further questions.
Feeling stifled, I eventually tired myself out and dragged him out of the underground room. Making the excuse that I didn’t feel good because it was dark around us. Devan went along with what I wanted without protest. Though his sudden docility was strange, I didn’t have the energy to worry about it. It was because complex emotions arose as I recalled the events at the temple.
Familiarity was truly frightening. The things I had endured at the temple, thinking they were unavoidable, felt much more burdensome now that I had spent days flowing relatively smoothly here. When I returned to the temple in the future, I would have to endure more, and with this feeling, I wasn’t confident. I had simply thought this was just a novel, that I should just save Kadilen and leave with peace of mind, but I was confused by emotions that felt no different from reality.
“You look deep in thought.”
I had been so preoccupied with my own concerns that I hadn’t focused at all on Devan who was walking with me. He seemed to have been staring at me for quite some time, standing in a comfortable posture facing me.
“I was thinking about the things that happened at the temple.”
“You said nothing much happened earlier.”
“Nothing did. Just being there for a long time means there’s a lot to remember.”
He went along with the words I had blurted out to evade the situation, though he clearly knew better. After walking together in a silence that was considerate toward me, we came back to my room. Before entering our respective rooms, Devan opened his mouth as if to say something but then waved his hand saying it was nothing. Even after sending him off as he turned away with an awkward face and lying down on my bed, the same scene kept coming back to me. Kadilen’s contemptuous eyes and the blood that had flowed from his sword.
‘You must not die yet.’
Somehow, I felt like my dreams tonight would be troubled.
* * *
There wasn’t much medicine left.
There was only one way to resolve the situation: returning to the temple earlier than planned.
The purpose of coming to the palace had been achieved faster than expected, and since the progress had been substantial, it seemed fine to hurry back a little. Of course, I couldn’t say that returning to the temple would be less difficult than suffering from the lack of medicine here. Still, Jiman was waiting for me there, and I had things left to do.
To return as quickly as possible, I needed to access the information I had to find out at the palace more rapidly. For this reason, I stuck to Devan almost like glue. The information he had found was limited, but there were many other things I absolutely had to hear before leaving. A prime example was the traps Zendal had set in preparation for emergencies.
Since I didn’t know which route Kadilen would take for his treason, I had to learn as many possibilities as I could. True to being a general who had led the war against the five nations to victory, Zendal’s traps were very sophisticated. While getting goosebumps at his meticulous plans, I also thought it was fortunate to know and be able to prepare in advance.
“There’s no accurate data on the size of Kadilen’s army, how does it look to you?”
Whenever Devan questioned me, I had to rack my brains each time to figure out which answer would be more advantageous. He didn’t seem to be overly suspicious, but feeling guilty for no reason, I had avoided his eyes several times. I couldn’t tell the truth this time either. I carefully chose my words.
“It’s not much even so. It’s laughable to think he’d commit treason with that. He probably hasn’t even thought about it yet.”
Combining his soldiers residing in the temple and disciples joining from below the mountain, it would exceed several hundred people. Moreover, since Wimu was said to be going around meeting people, it seemed he was searching for those who would join their cause. But if Zendal knew the size of the army under Kadilen’s command was large, his vigilance might deepen.
“But why does your face look like that?”
“Ah… I didn’t sleep well yesterday.”
This much was true. Since talking about my stay at the temple with him a few days ago, I had been losing sleep every night. Scenes I thought I had endured well kept coming to mind endlessly. The sight of Wimu turning away, Jiman’s painful murmurings, and Kadilen. Of course, part of it was also due to my physical strength declining from not being able to take enough medicine.
“Want to sleep together?”
“Stop talking nonsense and let’s just work.”
Despite my cold answer, he smiled pleasantly.
The longer I spent time attached to Devan, the more I could feel gazes following us from around. At first, I thought people were looking at me with disapproval of Ludin, but noticing the gazes growing sharper than when I was alone, I sensed something was off. It didn’t take long to discover what these seemingly illusory glances were about.
Just like any other day, after hearing Zendal’s plans for Kadilen’s temple from him and on my way to my room, I met Luan. He hesitantly approached me and spoke with a complicated expression.
“I understand the temple must have been stifling, but if rumors reach Father’s ears, it will be troublesome, Brother.”
My face automatically frowned at the enigmatic words. I was already displeased by his somewhat awkward posture as he approached me, and his thrown remarks without proper explanation made me feel even worse.
“What rumors?”
“You know. About Devan.”
What do you mean I know? He looked suspicious, hanging his head low and whispering in an unusually small voice. I couldn’t understand why he was acting embarrassed, as if afraid someone might hear. But at Luan’s subsequent words, I remained frozen in place until he left.
“How can you keep that man by your side for so long when he was merely a one-night partner before? Rumors are growing, one after another. Please, restrain yourself.”
There was no time to be offended by his contemptuous tone. It took a long time to grasp the meaning of those words. Even though they were all familiar words, at first it was difficult to understand exactly what they meant. It was something I had never considered.
So… what did he say?
Only after turning over Luan’s bombshell statement in my mind several times, like a stone, did I come back to my senses. If this was the past between Ludin and Devan that I had been so eager to discover, I would have been better off not knowing. Even amid the confusion, all of Devan’s words and actions were matching up in my mind like pieces of a puzzle.
‘Want to sleep together?’
Crazy bastard. I found myself unconsciously tearing at my hair. Him and me… no, precisely speaking, it wasn’t me who did it… but still, since it was this body…
The more I thought about it, the stranger I felt. I tried hard to think of something else quickly, but it was useless. My mind, seized by intense thoughts, was increasingly flowing in a strange direction.
Eventually, even after entering my room, I couldn’t easily shake off these peculiar thoughts and was just biting my lips in vain. I was so distracted that I didn’t even notice the door silently opening. Devan, who had entered my room without a sound, spoke calmly with his usual relaxed face.
“What time is it, and you’re already in bed?”
The moment I heard the word ‘bed’, my thread of reason snapped, and without any hesitation, I grabbed and threw whatever objects were at hand at him. After being momentarily surprised by the sudden attack, he smiled as if intrigued and flicked his finger to send the objects I had thrown back to one side of the room.
“Are you in the mood to play?”
I could feel my face burning up. After forcibly pushing out the grinning man and closing the door, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to look at his face until I returned to the temple. Every time I saw his face, strange imaginings automatically came to mind. A fact I didn’t particularly want to know was strongly imprinted in my head. I decided that with the information I had gathered so far being sufficient, I should avoid him as much as possible during my remaining time at the palace.
Of course, not long after, my resolution became futile.
“Hey!!! Wake up! Ludin!!”
It was my last day planned to stay at the palace, and simultaneously a day when I couldn’t come to my senses as fever rose the moment I opened my eyes. There was no medicine left.
